Top 10 Signs You're Integrating

10. You've been proposed to: I've been present for more proposals to female PCVs I was with than I can count, but this is not a strictly sex-specific item either. I've received a few proposals for marriage, both direct and indirect.

9. You're comfortable eating with your hands in a shared bowl: Ghanaians eat most of their family meals from a shared bowl and invite neighbors, especially foreign and exotic ones, to eat with them.

8. You can bite open any food packaging with your teeth: "Pure water" as the Ghanaians call it, is a satchet of water that you must bite open with your teeth before you drink it. Other products - most notably ice cream - is also sold in packaging that you can't enjoy without biting open first.

7. You prefer to wear your Ghanaian clothing over the stuff you brought from home: Ghanaian style is quite unique and very pronounced. Not only do you start to really enjoy it, but because all of your clothing is custom fitted and made from fabric that you selected, it feels much more natural to put on your Ghanaian wear than anything you brought from the states. I swore I wouldn't be one of "those guys" that overly adopt their study abroad culture, but with the clothing I make no promises.

6. You start behaving in "Africa Time": Everyone is late here, everyone. And I don't mean fashionably late. I just mean late. After awhile, you start to do it to. After all, why show up to a meeting even an hour late when you know you'll just be waiting for another couple hours?

5. Your internal monologue includes your local language: It's mostly simple words that I use often like "Thank you" or "Slow" or "We will meet again", but ithey've crept up in my thoughts and I can't get them out.

4. When watching American TV/movies, you feel uncomfortable when someone hands something to someone else with their left hand: Traditionally, the left hand is for wiping so you interact with people using your right hand. In my community, it's still done to be polite but it's not critical that you use your right hand all the time. However, they beat it into my head so much during PST (training) that I am especially careful to always use my right hand and I can't help but notice when people, even those not in the context of this culture, fail to do so.

3. You know what day of the week you were born on: Most people are named here based not on their father's name, or the season they were born in, or even the year, but on the day of the week. As it turns out, I was born on Thursday, so my name is Yao (or "Yaw" in Twi). Everyone also has a family name and most people have "Christian" names.

2. You need a jacket and a blanket when it's 75 degrees out: Not that it ever gets this cold. Sometimes in the morning when the sun is rising and you still have the fan blasting, you throw a sheet on yourself, but that's about it. I have stayed in rooms with A/C though and it can honestly be a challenge.

1. You accidentally speak in a Ghanaian accent when talking with other Americans: I can't help it. The good news is other volunteers do it to and they don't mind and people I'm talking to at home mostly don't notice (I think). But I laugh internally every time I do it. After all, it's how I speak English all the time at site so I can hardly blame myself.

BONUS: You can snap your fingers with other people when shaking their hands: They love doing this all over Ghana and each place seems to have a different routine. When you shake hands with someone in my community, you start with a traditional shake, then move your hand to wrap around the thumbs, as you do if you're helping someone of f the ground, then back to a handshake followed by snapping your fingers together twice (although I've snapped as many as 10 times on many occasions for reasons I don't totally understand).